The present invention pertains to the field of voice authentication. More particularly, the present invention relates to techniques for performing password verification in a voice authentication system.
Voice authentication is a technique by which the identity of a person is determined or verified based on his voice. Such techniques are required in many fields, such as telephone banking and investing. In these applications, a person may make or redeem investments or transfer balances over the telephone using only his voice, without a human operator on the other end of the telephone connection. Voice authentication systems commonly assign a password to each user to facilitate identification. The password typically is a computer-assigned Personal Identification Number (PIN), random digit string, or random phrase. However, users of voice authentication systems often prefer to select their own personalized password. One problem with allowing them to do so, however, is that users tend to forget the password they selected.
A simple approach to enabling a user to remember his password is to direct the user to select a password of a predetermined type that is easy to remember, such as his mother""s maiden name. This approach, however, is overly restrictive of the user""s choices of passwords and is therefore undesirable. Another approach is to avoid the use of passwords and simply ask users to repeat short phrases during enrollment and authentication. This approach is also undesirable, because it is time-consuming, adds complexity to the voice authentication system, and can be annoying to the user.
The present invention includes a method and apparatus for enrolling a user for voice authentication. The method includes outputting a first prompt designed to elicit a first utterance from the user, and then receiving and storing the first utterance as a password prompt for the user. The method further includes outputting a second prompt designed to elicit a second utterance from the user, and then receiving and storing the second utterance as a password corresponding to the password prompt.
Another aspect of the present invention further is a method and apparatus for performing voice authentication. The method includes outputting a password prompt to the user which is representative of an utterance previously received from the user and which corresponds to a password for the user, and then verifying the user based on whether a spoken response to the password prompt is received which matches the password. The present invention further includes embodiments in which such enrollment and authentication are combined.